I could feel steel under me. I was sitting on something cold and wet. I didn’t remember ever closing my eyes but I was opening them now. I was in a sewer. There were old maintenance lights lining the sewer corridor. Coming to in a place like this would have been alarming before. But it was actually kind of nice. This wasn’t Crown Hill. I was somewhere else now. I got up and walked down the corridor. The sewer had running water on both sides of me. The platform I was walking on was fairly dry though. Ahead of me there was a metal door. It had a circular wheel that locked it. I turned it until I heard the door lock click. I pulled open the door. The voices came then. Not ghostly whispers like I was used to. These were regular voices. There were people on the other side of the door.

Their eyes were on me as I walked into the larger room. There were doors around the room. All of them probably leading to corridors like the one I was in. There were multiple people in the room. All of them looked like they had been through hell. None of them looked terrified though. They just looked weathered. Tired. They all looked like I felt.

“Congrats. You’re the last one to the party bro,” A taller man said.

The man who greeted me had on fire fighter suspenders. He was built also. His skin was covered in ash and a few burns. He looked like he had been through the more literal version of hell. There were two girls on the other side of the room. Both of them were bloodied and bruised. The amount of blood on one of them was too excessive to be all hers. A fourth person was directly to my left. The boy to my left was in his teens. He had on a baseball uniform. It had been torn up. The logos no longer visible. He had a bat covered in some kind of gore. It didn’t look like blood though. Not human blood at least.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“I would say hell. But I think we’re way past hell by now. You came from somewhere horrible right? Then chose the way out. Chose the static?” The fire fighter said.

“Yeah. Did all of you do the same?”

Heads nodded and looked at me with confirmation. Everyone here had come from their own nightmare. They had all fought just like I did. They had all survived. And now they were all here.

“My names Bryce. I came from the Crown Hill Treatment Center.”

“Jon. The Shoreline Fire Department.”

The boy with the baseball bat walked forward.

“Henry.”

The girls stayed quiet for a little bit longer. One of them, the one in a long flannel shirt finally spoke up.

“Jessie. This is Jenny. She’s still getting past some shit. She hasn’t said much recently. We both came from a shelter. We were just looking for a place to stay for the night. We chose the wrong place.”

“Did all of you see The Host? The thing in the wheel chair?” I asked.

“With the sheets over it? Yeah. It came for all of us. But not until we went through a bunch of other crazy shit first,” Jon said.

“So what are we doing here?” I asked.

“It’s a game. We were chosen to be a part of it because we all survived. We’re all the missing persons from terrible events. You see on the news how they find a bunch of dead people killed inexplicably, then there’s always one person missing from the group. We are that one person. This is where people end up when they survive the first horrible thing,” Henry said.

“So what’s next?” Jessie asked.

Like it was scripted, a piece of paper floated down from an opening above us. It landed in the center of all of us. The rest of them just looked at it. I didn’t want to waste time with looking. Looking at things only gave them time to become something worse. I walked over and picked up the piece of paper. On it was a drawing of a map. It had a YOU ARE HERE spot drawn on it along with a maze looking map that was supposed to be the sewer system. Down the corridor in front of me was a spot that had EXIT written on it. At the bottom of the paper was a message.

“YOU HAD BETTER START RUNNING”

Black sludge dripped down from above us. It landed on the paper and burned through it. I dropped it and dodged the rest of the sludge that was falling. The smell that came with it caused the others to gag. Not me though. I was too accustomed to the rotten smell. I ran around the opening as the dripping turned into pouring. The acidic tar was filling the room.

“This way! We have to go! Now!” I yelled.

“What the fuck is it?!” Jon asked.

“Something bad! It will kill us all! So let’s go! The way out is this way.”

I went off running. The girls and Henry were close behind me. Jon took the longest to come. He was stuck looking at the rotten muck. I was half way down the corridor when I saw the door at the end. It would take a moment to open. I reached it and starting turning the wheel. I heard the door click open. The others reached me just as I was opening it. We went through the doorway and looked back. Jon was sprinting down the corridor. Behind him was a tidal wave of rot. The black muck was surging down the corridor chasing after him. The Rotten Ones were at the head of it. Jon was getting close but they were making up the distance between them. I didn’t know if he was going to make it or not. It was going to be close.

“Close it! He’s not going to make it!” Jessie yelled.

“No. He can make it!” I replied.

Jon was almost to us but the rot was closer to him down. It was lapping at his heels. We had to close the door but I was hesitant to do so. Jessie made the choice for me. She threw her weight at the door and slammed it closed. Jon’s body hit the door. We could feel it. We also felt the wave hit. I may not have been able to hear them talking through the door earlier but I could hear his screaming through the door now. I knew what was happening to him. I knew it was painful.

“It will be over soon.”

We waited there until his screaming stopped. I looked ahead of is. There was a ladder.

“Hey. We have to keep going. Let’s get out of here.”

I lead the group to the ladder. I went up first with the rest of them behind me. I pushed up on a manhole cover and felt fresh air hit me. I had forgotten what fresh air was like. It was glorious. It was weird to me that minutes after shutting someone in with their death I was relishing fresh air. It started to move from weird to concerning that I was so numb to people dying. I pulled myself up out of the sewer. I helped the others up then closed the manhole. The Rotten Ones kept showing up regardless of where I went. Eventually they would get out of the sewer. I didn’t want to make it any easier for them.

“Where the hell are we?” Jessie asked.

I looked around. We were in a town. It was dark out but not totally dark. I could see The Static all around us. In the sky. On the horizon. At the edge of the town in every direction. This town wasn’t in our world. It was in The Static. It was probably created just for us.

“We’re in The Static. We are in the show,” I said.

“So what comes next? They already got one of us. What are they going to do now?”

From the sky came more paper. Multiple pieces this time. They fell like ashes. Each of us picked up a piece. They all said the same thing.

“WELCOME TO THE SHOW! YOU ALL CAN LIVE. YOU ALL CAN DIE! BUT YOU ALL MUST PLAY! FOLLOW THE MAP AND REMEMBER TO HAVE FUN!

The map showed us directions. The directions lead to a school. We all dreaded whatever lesson was waiting to be taught there.